Flagship Events

Events with Far-Reaching Impact

Through our five flagship events, CABS offers the primary medium for business student collaboration across Canada. Our programming involves a combination of a leadership curriculum with moderated discussion, enabling the on-boarding of instrumental knowledge and rare insight to best prepare our members for success.

To develop effective student leaders, CABS has derived a curriculum of learning that is developed around the elected one-year terms of our member societies. Each event is intended to build upon the last, ensuring that each event offers a high level of value to those in attendance. The curriculum is balanced against current needs from our members with a long term growth strategy that aims to continually mitigate issues faced from our constituents while simultaneously focusing on constant improvement in the delivery of services and initiatives.

Subjects and issues covered at CABS’ events are recorded, databased, and made available through other mediums, such as a learning center on the CABS’ website. This system permits the implementation of a progressive learning environment where each conference can build upon it’s respective predecessor and innovate with new materials, yet members can easily access event resources from past editions as well.

As a rule, the curriculum ranges from facilitating strategy creation and delivering portfolio-specific tools to motivational speeches and group discussion. As previously mentioned, it adapts yearly to accommodate particular needs of different members, but is designed to have long-term benefit.

Of course, each event offers intangible benefits that go beyond the designed learning and resource-sharing; student leaders gain the opportunity to network with each other and forge national relationships that will continue to benefit them as they enter their careers and beyond. They also have the opportunity to connect with attending partners, alumni, and business leaders across Canada. Though the delivery of an effective learning curriculum remains the primary focus, these additional factors provide an immeasurable value which help make the CABS flagship conference the unique entities that they are.

Roundtable

Roundtable is the pinnacle of annual conferences hosting 300+ business student association executives from 32+ schools. Delegates are provided structured transition, training and planning for each portfolio. Schools collaborate to align the vision of business undergraduate education.

CBSC

The Canadian Business School Conference delivers a program centered around organizational strategy and risk mitigation, striving to help determine solutions to encountered issues that can be effectively implemented while furthering each member’s mission and objectives to be evaluated at a later retreat.

ECLR

CABS leadership retreats are annual development conferences for student leaders from both Eastern and Western Canada. The events provide the opportunity for delegates to further develop planning, implementation, and management skills that improve their ability to perform as student leaders.

WCLR

CABS leadership retreats are annual development conferences for student leaders from both Eastern and Western Canada. The events provide the opportunity for delegates to further develop planning, implementation, and management skills that improve their ability to perform as student leaders.

JDC Central (JDCC) is an annual undergraduate business school competition with academic cases for 8 business disciplines, parliamentary style debates, sports tournaments, social competitions and charity contributions. The event hosts 700+ students from Ontario, Québec and the Maritimes each Winter.

WHY HOST?

A Chance to Be Involved

An event is nothing without the people that execute it. Hosting creates more opportunities for the students of your school to become involved, gain experience and skills, and network with other students, alumni, and industry from across the country.

Build a Reputation

A successful event brings notoriety, status, and interest in your school. Other events and conferences you host will be viewed favorably, creating more opportunities for success through future initiatives.

Greater Partnership Opportunities

Hosting a professional event with a unique offering creates value in which to develop new and meaningful partnerships within your community, which can transfer to other programs and offerings.

Contribute to the National Community

Every year delegates leave the various CABS leadership conferences with a renewed sense of purpose. Hosting a CABS event is an opportunity to give back into the network that has helped empower both yourself and your constituents.

Interested schools express their interest to CABS by submitting a ‘letter of intent to bid’ before a prescribed deadline (the letter must follow the format and template prescribed by CABS);

CABS and the interested schools will communicate, sharing resources and information necessary for the interested school to create a bid document and presentation;

The interested school submits the bid package (document, presentation and any other non-standard additions) before a prescribed deadline;

The bid package is provided to the Board of Directors of CABS in the first or second week preceding a vote, and the “selection of organizing committee” for each applicable event is added to the agenda of the upcoming meeting of the Board;

The ‘upcoming Board meeting’ usually occurs during another CABS event, where the interested school is invited to present their ‘bid’ or ‘bid package’ to the Board in under 10 minutes, either in-person or via electronic video means (optional but highly encouraged);

The Board votes in closed session;

The bidding parties are notified of the result;

The vote is made public immediately by CABS through press release and online news release.

The prescribed deadlines mentioned in the aforementioned process can be found in the governing document, Corporate Directive on Prescribed Dates, which is subject to modification at any time by the management team. For your convenience, dates are posted to the Important Dates page on the website.

The document under the guardianship of the President, which means that all changes must be approved by her/him in order to be official. The prescribed deadlines and templates are important to respect and use, because they offer mandatory guidance to interested schools where there are fields and content that they must submit.

Each conference and competition in the undergraduate business circuit falls into one of two typical hosting categories:

Events hosted annually by the same organizing committee at the same location, group or university.

Different groups or universities interested in forming an organizing committee to host an annually occurring event each create a “bid” and present it to the organization for review, where the administrators of the organization vote on which bid to retain.

CABS’ Flagship events fall into the second category, while other events, such as the National Business School Conference (a CABS associated event) fall into the first category.

Interested schools must include the following content in their bids. These points are high-level, as to allow for creative freedom within the hard content of the bid itself.

Bid Document

The bid document is more elaborate than the bid presentation. It is comparable to a condensed business plan or project management plan. It should hold all information relevant to the vision for the event, as well as the human and financial resources required to attain this vision.

The basic required sections and subsections in a bid document include:

Idea

Cost (Delegate Fee)

Host location

Unique theme

Dates

Complete Schedule of Events (sessions, activities, explanation of each event, outlining the objective, the content breakdown, relevance to CABS and event mandate)

Transportation Provisions (to the event, between venues, and if applicable – after the event)

Team (Mandatory to present very complete profiles including the experience and qualifications of candidates showcasing their academic, employment and leadership experience)

Budget (use budget form; must be saved on Program Team Drive provided by CABS and updated by VP Finance monthly)

Timeline (use project management form; must be saved on Program Team Drive provided by the VP Events and maintained weekly)

The general bidding procedure featured above is included in the CABS Conference Policy, which extensively covers the governance of CABS’ property events and the relationship between the successful Program Team and the CABS Management team. Interested bidding parties should familiarize themselves with the content featured in the policy.

Step 1 Read & Fill Required Documents

The bidding process is efficient when all of the necessary information is provided up front in a single package. CABS made the bidding process easier by providing simple and mandatory forms required to bid. Read the Conferences and Competitions policy first to understand the complete process.

Step 2 Fill, Attach and Send

Once you have downloaded and completed all mandatory forms applicable to the event your are bidding for, complete the following fields. The forms should then be attached at the bottom of the form below.

Once hosts secure a successful bid, they must take the ensuing steps to ensure the respective event is of top caliber and representative of the abilities of parties involved.

The stylistic and thematic aspects of the event are an opportunity for the host school to present to delegates the image they wish to portray of their university. Each school and respective area have something special to offer, and the Program Team is encouraged to highlight what makes their community unique.

Session material becomes a collaborative effort between the CABS Management Team and the Program Team. Drawing upon past feedback, experiences, and materials, the CABS Management Team will leverage it’s developed curriculum and resources to assist the Program Team in ensuring that the conference workshops best serve the needs of business school executives and developing leaders.

Aside from the planning of session material, the OC is responsible for executing the deliverables for the event, however, both marketing and finance are centralized through CABS. The Program Team reports to the VP Events of the CABS Management Team, who serves to guide and mentor the Program Team, in addition to serving as a liaison between the Program Team and the entire CABS Management Team. As previously mentioned, both finance and marketing are centralized through CABS – any financial changes that occur after the bidding process must be consulted with and approved by the CABS VP Finance, and event marketing occurs through CABS media channels.

Once the event has concluded, CABS will work with the OC to finalize any financial accounts or other conference-specific business. The OC needs to ensure any event-related documentation is transferred to the CABS management, so the resources developed can be available to future committees.

Additionally, the CABS management team will reach out to the delegates through surveys and personal inquiries to elicit critical feedback, ensuring that such initiatives are continuously refined and improved. The OC will have a chance to take part in this feedback process; combined with reflective communication with the Management team, every individual who played a role in the success of the event will have the opportunity to leave the conference with new skills, insight, and experience.

The following table contains up-to-date information regarding the specific timelines for the deliverables that accompany each bid for a CABS’ Flagship event. While the exact dates may change during each fiscal year, the general timeline for the deliverables is largely standardized.

Questions

All inquiries regarding the Western Canadian Leadership Retreat, the Eastern Canadian Leadership Retreat, the Canadian Business School Conference, or CABS Roundtable should be directed to the VP Conferences.

All inquires regarding to JDC Central should be directed to the VP Competitions.